§ Fusion’s comics page has some great content, for example this piece where 8 LGBT cartoonists share their reactions to legal same-sex marriage, with comics from Hilary Price, Sophie Yanow and Howard Cruse’s which is really marvelous. The one from Christopher Keelty, above, made me laugh the hardest though.
§ Cartoonist/educator Frank Santoro has announced his third Comics Workbook composition competition which has PRIZES:
1st place – $750 cash prize to the winner
2nd place – $200 credit at Copacetic Comics and 150 cash
3rd place – $100 credit at Copacetic Comics and 100 cash
plus four $50 honorable mention prizes from Big Planet Comics
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Create a 16 page signature comic book narrative to the specifications below
This being Santoro the specifications are quite specific so read the ink carefully!
§ Jennifer DeGuzman reports from the ALA with and its big push for comics and diversity and comics diversity
In a year marked by breakthroughs for graphic novels and comic books in libraries, a recurring theme in the comics programming at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco was pushing the boundaries of the medium’s acceptance. Comics programming at the conference, held at the Moscone Center June 25–29, kicked off with GraphiCon, billed as “The Minicon at ALA Annual.” This show-within-the-show was devoted to discussing gender, sexuality, and racial diversity in the comics medium, and reaffirmed the ability of graphic novels to present thematically challenging material to readers.
Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung of the We Need Diverse Books campaign hosted GraphiCon, which was organized by the ALA’s Graphic Novels and Comics Member Interest Group and branded with the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseComics. Other artists making appearances at GraphiCon and for booth signings included comics writer Brenden Fletcher (Batgirl, Gotham Academy), artist/writer Becky Cloonan (Gotham Academy, Southern Cross), alternative comics mainstay Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), rising star Noelle Stevenson (Lumberjanes, Nimona), and comics historian and creator Trina Robbins.
§ Stan Lee, a man of 92, was taken to the hospital on Sunday but then showed up in fine fettle on Monday night for the Ant-Man premiere. Is this man immortal?
§ That Wilson movie with Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern, based on the Dan Clowes graphic novel, is actually being filmed!
§ Leah Hayes has a new graphic novel about two women who seek abortions, a topic that comics haven’t covered in a while. It’s called Not Funny Ha Ha. Right wing website Newsbusters reports on the book with a ton o’ scare quotes:
It’s a new notion to make abortion “funny”: draw a graphic novel about abortion that doesn’t actually show an abortion. Because, well, the sight of baby remains is anything but. Hailed as the “first graphic novel about abortion,” Not Funny Ha-Ha by artist Leah Hayes illustrates two women going through the “abortion process.” In it, Hayes attempts to show an “often funny,” “even humorous look at what a woman can go through during an abortion.” Already some in the media have recognized the “abortion story that needs to be heard.”
§ Although Mad Max: Fury Road was an amazing example of bringing feminist themes into an action movie, the subsequent comic, published by Vertigo and created entirely by men without Eve Ensler to watch over them, has a lot of very problematic elements, including rape scenes that the movie avoided. Sigh.
§ And over at Wired, Laura Hudson has a very calm eyed look at why rape scenes are usually a signal for lazy storytelling. In laying out rape tropes, Hudson doesn’t even mention the one that was way more prevalent back in the day: rape as the “heroic turning point” for a female main character, much as having their family killed is the inciting incident for men. I guess we’ve moved beyond that.
§ Finally, I reckon Zainab won the internet this week by taking her Patreon money and using it to commission a comic by Jane Mai about ELCAF.
that cartoon is great
Ah yes… The Furiosa comic. Soon to glut eBay and charity shops all-over.
The other website (rhymes with “Breeding Tool”) reported that it’s gone into 2nd printing. Purportedly this was because “controversy sells”. I think that’s not the case here. When I tried to get a copy on the day that it came out, both comicbook shops told me that it was massively oversubscribed, and that there were not even enough copies for the people with the pull lists. No wonder – everyone who usually doesn’t buy comics, but were stoked by Furiosa in the film, wanted to get their mitts on More Of That.
And then, by a stroke of luck having gotten hold of a wayward copy without having to pay scalping prices. And it was not a 5 bucks read. It was disappointing – Furiosa doesn’t do much except standing about, you don’t get any further insight in the other women… It was just the “what if they’d tacked 15 minutes in front of the film” that the filmmakers had purposefully left out because there was no need to illustrate the girls being raped.
Young Furiosa and her mother, being taken from the Green, and her struggle to get into a position of relative safety as Emperator – now that would’ve been a comic.
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